Sharon offers some very important suggestions. Most of us are stuck in 1820+ Georgia. Lincoln Co., NC and York Co., SC are rich in much earlier allied families with the Dover family that extend out in time over a long period of time through a number of states. Reba Cline proved that several months ago with the BIGGERS family. Pre 1800 Lincoln County contains records on John Dover, Mary Dover, Elizabeth Dover, Francis Dover and Hezekiah Dover. Think Zephaniah Dover is included too. Elijah Dover is part of this group, but I believe he arrived in York by 1800 having been in Rutherford County, North Carolina in the mid 1790's. If any possible Elijah descendants hasn't seen my post from last year, let me know and I'll post it again. The suggestion if it can be proved is that Elijah was in the same neck of the woods when Joshua Dover was in Rutherford AND the immediate area which then places them near the oldest Dover in 1800. There's not an allied surname posted on DOVER-L that I don't check out. I've personally created the census indexes 1790 - 1860 in Excel and do a search for all possible spellings of allied families from the postings. It takes just a couple of minutes. It's amazing to see some of the census neighbors that come out of the search. That's why it is important to post your known Dover family and any allied families that you know about. Dennis